all to often to I hear “but my site doesnt have duplicate content” to then take a look at a given website and find that there are up to 10 variations on essentially the same page.  For instance, does your site have PDF downloads of information otherwise available? Do you have a printer friendly page? Do you have a “send this page to a friend” link on your content pages?

Any of those functionality aides will often result in the same page being repeated many times over, and google will not catalog these individual pages, which isnt necessarily a bad thing, but what is a massive penalty to your website is that the spiders will miss out on other genuine content pages as they have spent their alloted time for your websites strength, filtering out duplicate material that neednt have been there!

In extreme cases google may penalise the whole site and in some instances I have seen websites not ranking for their domain name or their brand name, down to google interpretting masses of duplicate content as spam.

How can I avoid this? Well, a structured approach needs to be taken to your site but duplicate content can be avoided in a number of key ways.  The first and most important of which is to have an up to date robots.txt file.  This is an often misunderstood piece of seo “black magic” but it neednt be,  the most basic application of a robots.txt file will be to disallow google from indexing certain folders on your site, for instance if you DO have pdf copies of relevant content on your site, then you would use your robots.txt file to prevent the spiders from recording any information in your /pdf/ folder.

In some cases the content isnt however stored in an ordered environment, but you need to disallow certain pages from being indexed, an example of this would be if you have a shopping cart on your website, and you can sort by php your products.  If you have 10 products sorted by price, and then a link to sort them alphabetically, your sorted page will look like duplicate content to google.

The best way to avoid this kind of duplicate content is to add a rel=noindex tag to your link on the sorting page, that way only the first page will get indexed.

Duplicate content is an issue for all sites of all sizes, and its something that is liable to get you “google slapped” so check out your sites cache in google now (by searching for site:www.yoursite.com) and see what the search engines have recorded for your site, you might be surprised!

anyway, off for my calimocho!

mm

No, its not because I am stuck here in front of my monitors in what I affectionately call my “SEO War Room” (my multi monitor setup makes the office seem like the bridge of a destroyer when they are all on!)  its because I have just stumbled across some decent search engine rankings for a few competitive keywords I started targetting a few months ago.

When I set the website MOGmedia up, a little over a year ago, it was my intention to rank first page for some seo related terms specific to my co-location living, namely Kent and the Costa Del Sol.  Well, I was surprised to find that my last post, along with the MOGmedia homepage rank 2nd and 3rd respectively for either term!

You can check the websites, and the search terms that yields their positions as follows:

SEO Kent #3 in google.com for seo kent

SEO Costa Del Sol #2 in google.com for costa del sol SEO

These updates to the SERPs appear to have only happened since the last pagerank updates so Im not seeing a huge impact on traffic yet, but with some further refinement of inner pages and their relative keyword densities along with some creative linking, I think I might see an upturn in the next few weeks.

Anyway, back of to continue my SERP searching sessions!

MM

If you can visualise pagerank arriving at the index.xxx page of your website and being distributed downstream with each stage filtering out some more and more, until your last content pages pick up very little pagerank, deeplinking is the practice of getting outside links to “deep” within your website with a view to increasing the pagerank distribution to the rest of your website.

An example would be the blogroll link on this blog to my main site, MOGmedia well, thats just a link to the main page of my website, and google will spider the pages and assign value to them using the main page as an entry “doorway”, and in doing so it will drop a bit of pagerank there first before it moves on and values the other pages.

If I were to link to my OTHER website pages from an external site such as:

MOGmedia SEO services

MOGmedia Portfolio of SEO 

UK SEO hosting 

SEO Services Kent 

Contact MOGmedia Staff

These links will pass on the same amount of pagerank to the inner pages of the site.  Now for all intensive purposes the juice that will be passed on from this post is minimal as it will be “diluted” by the total number of outgoing links, but for an example it will do for now….

So, if you are trying to get more pages indexed in your website, choose a relevant “deep” or inner page to link to, and get link building!

anyway, Im off for another calimocho, or four!

MM

all the webmaster forums have again been alive with the buzz thats created every time google does the dance and has a pagerank update.

Well, I am pleased to say that for once my personal blog hasnt been ignored - I have just got a PR3 for the homepage of this  site and it did bring a wry smile to the mouth so for that I thank you google (I actually thank you more for that nice round $1,000 cheque this month from Adsense, but thats a different story for a different post!)

All this talk of PR updates though raises the  point that its awfully early for the THIRD pagerank update of the year isn’t it? Surely this one wasn’t due out till August?  Will Google be changing their PR policies, well - as always with the big G (not GOD, Google!!) its impossible to say but with the amount of PR bashing thats gone on in the last six months Id say its a near certainty that major changes are being made to the algo’s.  My best guess is that current pagerank calculations will have a lot more to do with the ageing of the inbound links, than the pagerank of the page that they come from.

Anyway, off to muse and check the rest of my sites…

MM

Some of you may know this trick already, but for those that dont its a great way to build up your .edu backlinks quickly.  This article isnt really a discussion on whether .edu links are worth more than normal links, I have discussed that topic ad infinitum on various forums in the past, its purely a look at how you can get edu links, and most importantly for free!

Google being the source of all information is ofcourse where you are going to find the best places to get edu links - and the most effective way of doing that is by posting context sensitive comments on related blogs.  To do a search all you need to do is go to google and type this in:

site:.edu +”powered by wordpress” +”add your comment”

This will then give you a list of wordpress blogs, with open comments that are hosted on .edu domains.

The best thing to do then is to sort the results by pagerank which you do with the SEOQUAKE addon for firefox and hey presto! a great big list of places to get free high PR edu backlinks!

Cheers

MM

some of you may have seen some abusive comments left for me on various forums, including many of my own (well, about a half dozen out of 20+, so not a huge amount) and some of you may be wondering why!

Well, it boils down to one thing, jealousy…

…. its a sad indictment on the world today that people can not handle others successes. I myself run a medium sized web design agency, and have many profitable websites. When I created a forum which took a huge chunk of traffic from some spotty 14 year old american kids forum on the same subject, that person decided to start a hate campaign against ME across the internet!

Well, I am happy to say that I am more mature, and a bigger person than he is so it really does not bother me. Heck, if I was to cry every time someone called me a name I would be stuck in the third grade, which unfortunately seems to be where this guy IS stuck.

Anyway, my lawyer has about 10 examples now of whats been said, and he is contacing the local police in the county that the perpetrator lives, so hopefully a visit from the authorities will abate the idiot!

off for a coffee!

MM

To celebrate the launch of my new webmasters forum, I am giving away free domain names at www.createadotcom.com!

Thats right, they are totally free and all you need to do to secure your own .com for nothing is make some posts in our new forums and discuss things with other webmasters.

If you are interested in getting a new .com for nothing, or even if you dont need one please support us by check out the new webmasters forum, which is the first one on the internet with a heavy slant towards web2.0!

CHECK OUT THE WEBMASTER 2.0 FORUM NOW AND START EARNING YOUR NEW DOMAIN NAME! 

Thanks for reading and I look forward to chatting with you at the new forums!

Buenas Noches!

one of the major problems that buyers and sellers face when trading on Digital Point, Sitepoint or any other major webmasters forum is that there is no security in place against scammers.

There are literally hundreds of cases where innocent buyers or sellers are scammed out of their money on a daily basis, and in the last 12 months it has reached epidemic proportions.

Well, I THINK I have come up with the solution!

At my new webmasters forum http://web2.0webmasterforum.com I have created an online currency system for traders to use that precludes any scammers from operating!

The way it works is: you buy WEB2.0$ with paypal funds OR you earn them for FREE by posting, inviting new members, voting on polls and much more, then you trade using the WEB2.0$ instead of the paypal, there are no chargebacks using WEB2.0$ (W$) so illegitimate buyers cant just reverse a paypal transaction a few hours later, and scam vendors if reported will be investigated before they can withdraw their W$ back into paypal!

OK - It sounds Good, but what does it cost?

Buying W$ is free. 100% Free.  If you buy US$50 worth of W$, you get W$50, so it is traded on a 1:1 ratio. Also, you can earn W$ by posting in our forums, inviting new members and much more (you can check all the different ways you can earn W$ clicking here) so it really is totally free!

You could just start posting today on the forums, then withdraw real money when you have enough to do so, so you can really earn money just for posting on our forums, and not just as a special introductory offer, anyone can earn, anytime!

So - Support your New Webmasters Forum and sign up today!

Problem is, I actually like digital point a lot, but it does have some issues.  So after looking at the rest of the other webmasters forums, I struck upon a great idea.  Why not create a new webmasters forum, LIKE digital point, but correcting the problems that it has.

So I have done: The results are at http://Web2.0WebmasterForum.com - in essence it is very similar to digital point, but I am including my whole back catalog of scripts, content and ebooks onto its download shop over the next couple of days, 95% of which will be free so please signup and check back every few days for everything from image content, to full turnkey websites and templates.

Also, I am incorporating a forum cash feature, where you are rewarded for each and every post that you make, and you will be able to trade the points in for domains, hosting and premium products in our store.

Apart from these great features we also have a full iTrader system just like digital point and a free marketplace,  SO, if you want to be part of this new community and be a founding member, be sure to sign up asap!

What some of you might find strange is that I have also replicated somewhat the infractions system that is in place at DP, but the difference is the points are only going to be given out in cases that actually merit them, not because MODs have decided to go all gung-ho!!

Hope to see you all soon at the web2.0 webmaster forum

Buenas Tardes Muchachos!

Im an active member on about a dozen webmaster forums, but the one that I enjoy the most is digital point. To me its mixture of heavy traffic, great discussions and active marketplace are just the right mixture of components necessary  to make a great forum.

That is why I have been dismayed to find out this evening that I have been banned from digital point, for reporting mis-placed threads that I have created!

If you get banned for reporting your own mistakes, then surely people are less likely to do so…..

Anyway, firstly I must give you a history of my infractions that I have received.  Firstly, I was infracted and you can argue rightly so, for bumping a thread in the general promotion category.  That accounted for 5 points, as I got fined one point for “creating the thread in an inappropriate section” and 4 more for “bumping” said thread.   oooooops.

Secondly, I placed a thread where I was selling a facebook app in the BST -> SITES section, now I would have thought that this would be the best place to put a facebook app, and I did give it some consideration before I posted it, but came to the conclusion that this would be the right place.  I must have come to the wrong conclusion as I was again infracted for  “creating the thread in an inappropriate section”.  This time, I tried unsuccessfully to argue my case, as I justifiably I still feel, did no wrong.  Guess what, I got infracted twice more for arguing about it!

This brought my total infractions level up to a whopping 9 without really having done too much wrong.  To be fair, Im not contesting the first “block” of infractions I got, frankly I cant complain and I learnt my lesson.  The second lot I still wholeheartedly disagree with, but hey, I was willing to overlook them as well and get on with my life.

So today, with two browser windows open, one pointing at BST->freebies and the other pointing at BST->Content, I started two threads.  BOTH threads were for content related sales, BUT the sales value for both amounts were under $5 and at digital point they operate a policy that all transactions advertised at $5 or less should go into the freebies section.

I mistakenly posted BOTH threads into the wrong area.  Ooooops again.  BUT I naively perhaps thought that it wouldnt be a big deal, after all I had noticed that they were in the wrong place so I myself reported both threads, left a nice little message saying along the lines of “sorry mods I posted this in the wrong section, my bad for causing bother, please move”, AND THEN even took the step of warning a new MOD aaron_nimocks (I think thats his username, he is the first of the MODs alphabetically) by PM to let him know what I had done.

To Aarons credit, within minutes I got a response back saying that he was on a super slow connection so he couldnt do it then and there, but if I had indeed posted a warning on the threads report function (which I had) then it would be sorted out.

Case closed, problem solved, or at least so I thought.  About 5 minutes later while answering a PM I pressed “send” and got redirected to a big “Your Banned!!” screen.  I appear to be banned until March the 11th at 13.05 server time, as this is 90 days after my first “block” of infractions disappears.

I guess everyone that ever gets banned feels hard done by, but after reviewing the reasons for my infractions, and especially in the light of the fact that I myself reported my misplaced threads AND pro-actively contacted a MOD to help me sort it out, well, lets just say I am dismayed at the behavior of the DP MOD crew, I feel a little bit of common sense should have been used in this case, as I vehemently feel that tonights infractions were unwarranted.

To cap it all off, yesterday I posted a new sale thread in the BST->content section for a facebook app, and a senior member commented that I had posted in the wrong place, and that site sales would have been a better candidate to post in!  Looks like Im not the only one who thinks that way.

So, the question is what to do now?  “take it like a man” and wait two weeks to serve my unjust sentance? Well, unless any of the MODs are big enough to step up and recognise that a mistake has been made, then I guess thats all I can do……